


Colors of Luck and Prosperity

by devilinthedetails



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works
Genre: Colors, Gen, Good Fortune, New Year's Celebrations, Yanjing, luck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27884932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Jia Jiu and the colors of the new year in Yanjing.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Colors of Luck and Prosperity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Malorie's Peak Prompt "Color" at Goldenlake. Also inspired by the Merry Melodies event at Goldenlake.

“I wish all children around the world

smartness exceeding scholars,

intelligence filling your brains.”- 

Translation of lyrics from the Chinese New Year song “Wishing You Prosperity."

Thanks to China Highlights for the translation. 

Colors of Luck and Prosperity

All throughout the diverse and far-flung provinces of Yanjing, the color for a lucky lunar new year was bright red; the color for a prosperous one the rich golden of a glinting coin fresh from the imperial mint. 

As a rice noodle thin child in her birth province of Guangnan along the distant southeastern coast of Yanjing that was battered by typhoons from high summer to mid-autumn, Jia Jiu had been the one to inscribe golden characters appealing to their gods and ancestors for wealth, good fortune, and honor to follow the footsteps of her living family members in the coming year on scarlet lanterns. Although she was the youngest in the sprawling Jia family compound and a girl, she was the only one in her family who knew how to read and write. The only one with magic flowing through her veins. The only one the village mage and tutor, who had thrice failed the yinshi exams designed to identity the most talented mages in the country held annually in the Summer Capital of Yan but who nonetheless was the best educated man for li around, was willing to invest time teaching characters and simple spells in exchange for heavy sacks filled with rice from the swampy, terraced rice paddies her father and uncles farmed from sunrise to sunset. 

Even as a lanky, gap-toothed child clumsy and unfamiliar with all the graces that marked a civilized person, she had taken a fierce pride in being the only member of her family who could read and write bold, sweeping characters. Characters that were written the same in her native dialect of Guangese as in the official Yanjingyi language the Long Dynasty had imposed, according to her village tutor, in an attempt to establish some linguistic unity in an empire with a thousand regional dialects, some of which were mutually incomprehensible. Characters that would be pronounced differently if they were said aloud because Guangese had nine tones and the official Yanjingyi language only four. 

Her parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents would hover proudly behind her shoulders as she hunched over her low elm wood desk and wrote the characters. They didn’t realize that she was imagining the words pronounced in the limited four tones of Yanjingyi rather than the more expressive nine tones of Guangese. They didn’t understand that it was against the law for her tutor to instruct her in any language other than the official Yanjingyi. They didn’t know that a tutor could be whipped and fined for teaching in a native dialect. Native dialects were subversive, encouraging division rather than unity, and therefore mistrusted by central authorities. They were ignorant peasants, and even as a child, she was determined to rise above being that. To become great and wise. Celebrated for her knowledge and power. Not sneered at as a bumpkin from the southern hinterland. 

When she finished covering the crimson lanterns with perfect, curling golden characters, she would hand the lanterns to her grandfather, father, uncles, older brothers, and older male cousins, bowing to them as she did so. Her bow would conceal how reluctant she was to give away her handiwork to those who couldn’t read or write. 

Then she would join the ranks of women, trailing behind her grandmother, mother, older sisters, and older female cousins who themselves walked behind the men into the courtyard of the Jia family compound. She would stand and watch as each of her male relatives in order of seniority lit their lanterns and released them into the dark night sky. 

Tilting her neck up, she would stare up at the glowing lanterns carrying her carefully written characters faded from view, floating on the prevailing winds toward the crashing waves of the Storm Dragons Ocean. Although the lunar new year always occurred in winter, the air around her face would be mild and relatively dry by the standards of hot, humid Guangnan. Winter was the most pleasant season in Guangnan, her mother always said. 

Her last lunar new year spent at her family compound in Guangnan had been the Year of the Crow, she recalled with a sudden pang. Now she and the girls with whom she shared her dormitory were preparing to welcome the Year of the Turtle. It would soon be six new years welcomed without her family beside her--half the cycle of twelve that tracked the relentless passage of time in the Yanjingyi zodiac. 

Six years that she had celebrated the new year in the Summer Capital of Yan where the yinshi exams were conducted every year and the finest schools to prepare for these exacting tests were located. Six years since she had enrolled in one such school. Six years of speaking, writing, and reading only in official, elevated Yanjingyi and never in vulgar, common Guangese. 

Yan was in northeastern Yanjing--just south of the wall that spanned a thousand li with a winding, serpent spine and tried, generation after generation, to keep out the invading barbarians from Yithung. In the winter, the howling winds would sweep down from the steppes, and it would be too cold to release lanterns blazing with hope, alight with dreams, into the new year’s night. 

Instead, wishes for a prosperous, lucky new year were written in golden characters on paper red as the dust that blew in from the steppes in summer. Stretched out on the plain bamboo carpet of the crowded dormitory she shared with a dozen other girls, she wrote her wishes, shining as sunbeams, onto the red paper with care, her tongue protruding from her lips in a gesture she wished she could train herself to eliminate because it was so crass--so undignified. 

“My characters are a mess.” He Fei--called Fei Fei by her friends, the second, personal character of her name repeated twice because it would’ve sounded strange to Yanjingyi ears to refer to anyone by a single, lonely character--glanced down at the smeared marks on her red paper. The evidence for how her paper had come to be marred was smudged along her wrist. “They’ll probably bring me bad luck in the new year.” 

“Nonsense, Fei Fei,” Jia Jiu assured her friend, maintaining her dagger-sharp focus on her own writing. She didn’t want the bad luck that had befallen her friend to strike her like lightning as well. 

“Not nonsense. Truth.” Fei Fei sighed. She was a clever girl, but not a neat one, Jia Jiu thought and not for the first time. The sloppiness of her writing meant Fei Fei was beaten with the bamboo rods all masters bore until her palms or the soles of her feet bled scarlet as dust, as new year’s wish lanterns, as the paper on which they now recorded their hopes for glory and joy. Leaning over to examine Jia Jiu’s work, Fei Fei added in a wistful tone, “My characters are nowhere neat as yours. If my characters were neat as yours, they’d bring me good fortune and honor in the new year, I know it.” 

“I could write a new year’s wish for you,” Jia Jiu offered, grabbing a blank piece of red paper. 

At Fei Fei’s eager nod, she bent over the paper as she had once leaned over her family’s lanterns, and wrote in her most graceful, flowing calligraphy a wish for good luck and happiness in this upcoming Year of the Turtle. She even drew a picture of that steady-paced animal in its hard, beautiful shell so it might smile on her friend in the year named in its honor, and perhaps even on her for her generosity. 

Then she held it up for the entire dormitory of girls to admire with gasps and gaping jaws the golden drawing on the crimson paper.


End file.
